


The Quiet of Other People

by farad



Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-30
Updated: 2011-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-22 00:04:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farad/pseuds/farad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After "The Collector", Ezra and Josiah have to come to terms with Emma.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Quiet of Other People

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Mag 7 Bingo prompt 'Ringing the Church Bell'. Also, a belated birthday present for Delphi!
> 
> Beta-ed by the wonderful Kayim. All mistakes are my very own.
> 
> Set after "The Collector" and Josiah's spectacular demonstration of the stupidities of unrequited love.

_"The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people."_ – Ezra Pound

 

It was late when they got back – so late that all Ezra wanted to do was take his recovered green coat and go to his room.

But as he finished up with his horse, adding a few extra oats to the bucket in the stall in place of the curry the horse deserved, he sighed. Gathering up his coat, rifle, and the saddle bags with his extra ammunition and standard travel things, he debated.

It had been a long night – interesting, but long. They'd captured Tophat Bob, who was currently in the jail. Fortunately, the job of watching him had fallen to JD and Buck who seemed to be more tolerant of the man's ramblings that fluctuated between pleas to shoot him and curses on their respective families and future offspring.

They'd gotten back Ezra's coat and a few other things from Guy Royal and right now, Chris was talking to Mary Travis about what needed to be done at Guy Royal's place, to get possessions back to their rightful owners. Charges against Royal would be nice, but so far, Tophat Bob hadn't admitted that Royal had outright hired him for a job. Without his word, they couldn't implicate Royal – but it was still early. Bob was scared of the noose, and once the Judge showed up, he might be more willing to negotiate. Or he might be expecting Royal to get him out.

Either way, for now, Guy Royal was free. But Royal wasn't really who Ezra cared about, other than in the abstract. He was really thinking about Emma Dubonnet, the woman who had been with Guy Royal when they had arrived at the house.

The woman who Josiah had loved.

"You headed to the saloon?" Vin asked as Ezra walked toward the door to the livery. He was taking the time to rub down his horse – and Chris' and JD's. Bastard.

"It is where I reside," he said, frowning. It was an obvious question, and Vin Tanner was not an obvious man. So he paused, waiting for whatever it was that Vin was actually asking.

"Thought it might be good if one of us swings by the church. Josiah was awful quiet on the ride back."

Vin didn't look up as he spoke, still rubbing down Chris' horse with fixed concentration, as if he'd never done something like this before. Which Ezra knew was most certainly not the case. He debated several possible meanings to this casual concern for Josiah, not the least of which was that Vin was annoyingly concerned about each of them.

No, the worry for Josiah was in Vin's nature. Which begged the more worrisome question. "Why ever do you think I should be the one to check up on him? We have very little in common, less, it seems, than you and he do." He kept his tone even and as unemotional as he could. It hadn't escaped his notice, however, that Vin had been the one chasing Josiah into Guy Royal's house, the one watching over Josiah and, in the end of it, the one drawing Josiah back to the horses and then back to town.

Vin still didn't look at him, his hands moving over the horse with easy, regular strokes. "It's gonna be a while before I finish up here. Reckon if he's too upset, he'll lose himself in the bottle again and we might need him later, if Tophat Bob's boys come to try to break him out. Figure sooner's better than later."

It was a reasonable answer, but Ezra also knew it wasn't the complete answer. "It would seem that Nathan would be better suited to this enterprise, if you can't do it yourself. Certainly he and Josiah have a much closer friendship."

Vin worked down to the horse's hoof then stood and turned, meeting Ezra's gaze directly. It was almost a relief to be able to see what was on his mind. "Maybe," Vin agreed, his face calm. "But Josiah just had his heart broke again. Figure he could stand to talk to someone who knows how that feels."

Ezra straightened, wary and worried and confused at the implications. Before he could ask, though, Vin turned back to the horse. "It's up to you," he went on, "go ask Nathan. He's probably still over at the jail, checking on Bob and on Chris – if Chris will let him. Leave your gear – I'll walk it over when I'm done here."

Ezra stared at him, not sure what to say or ask. Eventually, discretion seemed the wiser course and with a second confirmation that Vin would, indeed, deliver Ezra's possessions to his room, he left the livery, wondering what Vin knew. Wondering how worried he should be.

The night air was cool, enough of a change from the warmth of the livery to make him shiver. As he neared the boardwalk, he stopped, considering his course of action. He looked up toward Nathan's rooms, not surprised to see them dark. He could go find Nathan – all he had committed to was seeing that someone checked up on Josiah. He could just as easily send Buck or JD – but that require him staying at the jail, which was not what he wanted to do. So Nathan it was. There weren't that many possible places he could be. And Nathan probably would be the best person for this particular chore.

'But Josiah just had his heart broke again.' Vin's voice seemed to echo in Ezra's head, and the word 'again' seemed to have particular weight, even though he didn't recall Vin emphasizing it when he'd spoken. 'Again', as if Vin knew – but there wasn't anything to know, certainly not about a 'broken heart'. The very idea of it . . .

He shook his head at his own fancy. There had been no hearts involved, certainly not Josiah's. He had made it clear from the very first time that this wasn't his nature, that what happened between them was an aberration. An exception. While he had seemed disappointed when Ezra called a halt to it, Ezra could sense the underlying relief.

There was nothing for Vin to know, certainly not about 'heartbreak'. If anyone had suffered that -

He shook his head, casting away that thought. No one had suffered anything. Perhaps Vin was referring to something from Josiah's past that he knew about. It wasn't as if Josiah and Ezra had spent much of their time together engaged in conversations about their respective lives.

It wasn't as if they'd spent much time engaged in conversation.

Which was, on consideration, probably why it had lasted as long as it had. Lord knew, and wasn't that an irony, that when they did engage in conversation, it rarely ended in any sort of agreement.

Which was another reason for him to go find Nathan. The memory of Josiah sitting on the boardwalk, his legs splayed out in those damnably short pants, drinking because of a woman, left Ezra very little that he wanted to say to the man.

He started down the main street, the light from the watch fires and the bright moon casting shadows along the way. He was negotiating an area that he knew to be uneven when a different shadow moved over the ground and he looked up, finding himself in front of the church. Above him, someone stood in the bell tower, standing in front of the old metal bell that still hung in the place. His face was obscured, lost in the shadow cast by the bell, but Ezra knew that profile, knew the person who would stand there, staring out into the desert at this time of night.

In the bell tower. Damn it.

Ezra sighed. It had been a sort of signal between them, a sort of invitation from Josiah for him to come visit. It had started by accident – well, for the most part. The night after Maude had left that first time, Ezra had gone to the church, thinking, for no reason he had allowed himself to examine, that Josiah needed to understand that Maude was nothing like what Josiah thought. He had marched in, sure of himself and his message, only to find that Josiah either didn't believe him or didn't care – he still wasn't sure which. They had drunk cheap whiskey, eaten some bean and bread dish that Josiah had on the stove, then ended up standing in the bell tower, looking at the moon and feeling the soft breeze of the late night blowing coolly over their skin.

It had been there, in the bell tower, that Ezra had first gone to this knees for the older man, wanting to find a way to shut him up. It had. For almost a week, Josiah had absented himself from the saloon and any other place where Ezra might run into him.

At first, Ezra had allowed himself to believe that he had won some victory, that he was relieved to be without the former priest's condescending attitude. But by the fourth day, he found himself straining to pick Josiah's timberous voice out of the crowd, watching to catch a glimpse of him as he walked along the boardwalk.

By the seventh day, Ezra had found himself standing outside the batwing doors of the saloon, staring up at the moon which just, coincidentally, happened to be rising over the bell tower. He had stood and stared for what seemed to be hours, the saloon slowly emptying, Chris and Buck staggering past and teasing him as to his losing streak. They'd meant at poker, but they'd been wrong; he'd played well and Lady Luck had sat at this right hand.

But when it came to other types of losing, they were right, and as they'd weaved their way along the center – and sides – of the street, Buck nattering on about why he was going back to his room instead of off with one of his many lady friends, Ezra had considered his own solitude. And his own reasons for sitting out here in the dark, staring at a damned bell tower.

Which was when Josiah had walked out onto it, his pale hair catching the light of the moon. Ezra had hesitated, but not for long. And he had once more been rewarded with pleasure and silence, but this time, it didn't last seven days.

Now, he stood in the roadway, staring up at the too-familiar sight of Josiah in the bell tower, his features just visible. He wasn't looking up, toward the crescent of moon, but instead, he was looking down, toward Ezra.

At Ezra.

Josiah'd ridden like a crazy man into the heart of a veritable fortress to save a woman who didn't want saving - a woman who didn't even remember who he was. He'd acted like a fool, a drunken fool, for a whore. Damn the man. Damn him to hell.

But try as he might to turn away, to walk away as he had done before, Ezra found himself taking first one step and then another toward the church. He moved slowly, giving himself time to change his mind and time for Josiah to tell him not to come.

As he entered the shadows that cloaked the church steps, all he heard was the soft brush of boots on wood above him. As he opened the church door, the hinges squeaked just a little, evoking the memory of JD's and Buck's drunken 'mooing' from a lifetime ago, and he paused again, trying to get a grip on himself, on his run-away desire.

Above him, he heard footsteps, slow but steady, coming down the ladder to the tower. Perhaps Josiah would cast him out now, in the quiet of the church instead of outside for all the world to hear. It was that thought that spurred him forward, his anger speaking louder than his rationality – what right did this besotted fool have to take him to task? Had he not been the one to end it just weeks before, had be not been the one strong enough to see the futility of it?

But as he reached the alter, the steps above paused. Josiah must have reached the bottom of the ladder and now, like Ezra, he probably stood, wondering what he was thinking. Ezra could imagine him, his features worn and pale, his hangover making the lines of his face deeper and the pain in his eyes more stark.

That, perhaps, was the worst of it. That Josiah had hurt that much over that woman – that woman who could no more be bothered with him than Maude could.

That he had hurt for her but he didn't hurt for Ezra. As he stared at the altar, the candles filling the room with the scent of sage and yucca, he once more felt the pull to leave.

"Ezra?" the voice was low, louder than a whisper but not quite a moan. It came from the top of the stair well to the second floor, and Ezra glanced to see the door to the stairs open. "I . . . "

He paused and Ezra thought he might have sighed. Then the silence lengthened, grow louder in the space between them, and Ezra knew the words that would eventually fill it. Better to make them his own, as he had done before, than to hear from this man who could bear the hurt of a woman so far beneath him than the affection of a man.

"Vin suggested I check to make certain you were well," he said, forcing his voice to remain smooth and even. "As I see that you are, I shall take my leave - "

"No. Wait. Please." The words were still quiet, but there was a desperation in them that Ezra had never heard before. For an instant, he wondered if Josiah were injured, if there was some problem that Vin had been correct in anticipating.

The steps started once more, closer, louder, but with more speed. They rang through the church as Josiah came down the stairs, echoing off the wooden walls and floor, to the point that Ezra wondered that the whole town didn't hear.

Then Josiah stepped into the room. In the light of the candles, he looked much as Ezra had imagined – worn, lined, hungover. Hurt.

But when his eyes found Ezra at the altar, something changed. His lips twitched as if he would smile, and the look in his eyes changed to one of relief. Relief, and pleasure. When he spoke, his words were slow and uneven, as if he were dredging them from somewhere deep inside himself. "I was afraid you wouldn't come. I was afraid . . ."

Ezra turned them over in his mind, not quite sure what they meant. Perhaps he had misspoken, perhaps he meant that he was afraid that Ezra would force this at another time -

"I was wrong to go after her," Josiah went on. "But it wasn't for her – it never was." He took a step forward, lifting one hand out toward Ezra, his palm open and facing up, as if in offering. "I – I needed to know for myself," he said softly. "I . . ." He gestured, the movement a little wild, as if it would fill in for the words he couldn't find. Or couldn't voice.

Ezra wanted to hear them, wanted to be clear on what the other man meant. But even as he debated how to get to those words, the flailing hand reached further and caught him by the front of his suede jacket, pulling him forward.

They had never kissed before. In all the things they had done, they had never had this contact. Because this wasn't about the sex.

Josiah wasn't hesitant – he was demanding, his tongue possessive as it took control of Ezra's mouth. For a second, Ezra almost fought him, almost clamped down with his teeth, almost shoved at Josiah's shoulders, almost pushed him away.

Until Josiah's arm slipped around Ezra's back, holding him loosely but warmly in place. As if this were where he was supposed to be.

When they finally broke apart, Josiah leaned his forehead against Ezra's, both of them breathing hard.

"I was afraid you wouldn't come," Josiah repeated. "And I couldn't blame you if you didn't."

"I almost didn't," Ezra agreed. "I started to leave you up there with your damned broken bell."

Josiah's lips brushed against Ezra's forehead, and Ezra thought he might be smiling. "Would have served me right. A foolish old man with a broken bell."

"Perhaps it's a good thing that it doesn't ring," Ezra mused, relaxing a little more against Josiah's solid weight. "We could have caused quite the scandal, waking people in the middle of the night."

"One day, I hope to get a new bell," Josiah said. "So for now, perhaps we should start meeting each other half way – say, upstairs?"

Ezra straightened, pushing back enough to look into Josiah's eyes. They'd used the bed before, but it had never been the first choice, perhaps because it was too intimate. Too personal.

Josiah held his gaze and smiled again. Then he turned and headed for the stair way, again holding out his hand to Ezra in offering.

Ezra took it.


End file.
